Beneath
Synopsis;
Planet Earth defends itself against fatal devastation caused by human habitation. An increasing number of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes annihilate large numbers of humans all over the world.
Book author and magazine columnist living in southern Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Dennis Quant, a physical fitness devotee in his late forties, specializes in the subject of wilderness survival. The future is clear to him. It is the year 2013; he envisions an earth change apocalypse before the year is over. As he often tells his brother Danny, a construction engineer, and his favourite niece, Aggie, a fifteen-year-old high school student, he refuses to be a victim.
The safest way to live, he asserts, is to build an underground shelter that will survive most cataclysms that he can foresee. He finds a setting in the wilderness, where north Malibu is the closest human settlement. With Danny and Aggie’s assistance he begins building his sanctuary. His girlfriend, Chelsea, starts work in London, uninterested in survival beneath the ground.
By the time his shelter is built, New England has begun to be ravaged by earthquakes, droughts and wildfires. He has begun living alone in his refuge when a series of massive earthquakes destroy most of the region. The only person close to Dennis whom he manages to rescue is Aggie. They begin to live together underground with a kitten named Gilda that Dennis adopted from an animal shelter.
As they follow Dennis’ wilderness survival methods – a major learning process for the teenage girl – they kill or grow their own food, travel by bicycle or on foot, make wells for water, and try to manage their own minds and bodies during what turns out to be years underground.
Dennis experiences strange dreams that tell him the earth will be restored in five years, ready for some form of normal habitation above ground. In time Aggie begins to have her own kinds of dreams, which are associated with her burgeoning sex drive, and the problems that presents two isolated relatives living together
In their fourth year living beneath the ground, Dennis is unprepared for a climate change that brings heavy snowstorms to his area. He is injured during a hunting trip, and needs to be rescued by Aggie after hours of lying unconscious in the snow. This leads to a broken leg and frostbite. Dennis is now largely dependent on his nineteen-year-old niece for survival.
In the fifth year, the ETs arrived on Earth.
© Peter Alexander 2012-06-28
The safest way to live, he asserts, is to build an underground shelter that will survive most cataclysms that he can foresee. He finds a setting in the wilderness, where north Malibu is the closest human settlement. With Danny and Aggie’s assistance he begins building his sanctuary. His girlfriend, Chelsea, starts work in London, uninterested in survival beneath the ground.
By the time his shelter is built, New England has begun to be ravaged by earthquakes, droughts and wildfires. He has begun living alone in his refuge when a series of massive earthquakes destroy most of the region. The only person close to Dennis whom he manages to rescue is Aggie. They begin to live together underground with a kitten named Gilda that Dennis adopted from an animal shelter.
As they follow Dennis’ wilderness survival methods – a major learning process for the teenage girl – they kill or grow their own food, travel by bicycle or on foot, make wells for water, and try to manage their own minds and bodies during what turns out to be years underground.
Dennis experiences strange dreams that tell him the earth will be restored in five years, ready for some form of normal habitation above ground. In time Aggie begins to have her own kinds of dreams, which are associated with her burgeoning sex drive, and the problems that presents two isolated relatives living together
In their fourth year living beneath the ground, Dennis is unprepared for a climate change that brings heavy snowstorms to his area. He is injured during a hunting trip, and needs to be rescued by Aggie after hours of lying unconscious in the snow. This leads to a broken leg and frostbite. Dennis is now largely dependent on his nineteen-year-old niece for survival.
In the fifth year, the ETs arrived on Earth.
© Peter Alexander 2012-06-28
